Closing on the Lot

We are now officially landowners!

This past Thursday, October 15, 2009, David and I closed on our lot. The closing took place at the Duell Law Firm in Eagle Point down 280. All it really entailed was signing a BUNCH of papers and handing over a check. There were two lawyers, two real estate agents, and David and me. We signed papers and passed them around the table in a circle. The closing documents included papers about the terms of the sale, about taxes, about deeds, about titles, about everything else you could think of! We ended up having to pay some taxes on the lot as well as homeowners' association fees for the rest of the year. I thought that having to pay the homeowners' association fees was a little much considering that we only have an empty plot of land! Oh well. My dad said that we are basically paying for upkeep of the neighborhood - for Ballantrae folks to maintain the common areas and whatnot.

The whole process didn't take long at all; we started at 10 am and were done by 10:30 am.

Here are some pics from the closing: one of David signing and one of David and me with our wonderful, sweet, and beautiful realtor, Teresa Stahl (if you're in the market for a house, let me give you Teresa's contact info - she's great!!).

Next up is deciding on a house plan. We have an appointment this coming Wednesday, October 21, 2009, with David Patton of the Home Plan Center in Hoover. Mr. Patton has several books of plans to look through. My dad, Glynn, is going with us to look at the plans.

Dave has been playing around with Google Sketchup lately. He has drawn a picture of the plan we had been considering. Using this program, you can draw 3D images, and then you can walk around inside the house. We were using this to "test out" the Greenridge plan. Here is Dave's rendering of the outside of the Greenridge plan (complete with his TT out in front - just for laughs).

Tomorrow we are going out to Ballantrae to visit the lot. I want to take down the for sale sign and want to just walk around on "our property." ;) We will also go in the open houses in Ballantrae (again) to get ideas of what we like and don't like in the house plans. We might meet up with my mom and dad, Wanda and Glynn, to show them David's Google Sketchup renderings.

Looking forward to going to see Mr. Patton about the house plans! I'll post some photos from that (and maybe of me taking down the for sale sign from the lot!) next time.